Abstract

Wind power is a growing energy sector in Sweden. However, it still represents only a small part of the total electricity production, about 0.7%. In order to create good conditions and to facilitate the establishment of wind power in Sweden, the government has for example, created a national centre for wind use. The objective has been to reach the governmental goal, which is an expansion of wind power by 10 TWh by year 2015 compared to the level in 2002.
The Swedish electricity market was deregulated in 1996 which refers to the introduction of a competitive market in electricity production and trade. The electricity net business, however, continued to be a monopoly as it was considered to be too expensive to draw new electrical cables.
The wind power companies are dependent on net companies to be able to transfer the produced electricity out on the net, to the market so to speak. Feasibility studies in this study show that some wind power companies experience the connection process as troublesome and the set of laws around this to be problematic.
The purpose of this study is to contribute in a governmental investigation of mapping how the present set of laws creates obstacle for large scale developments and expansion of renewable electricity production. This study has investigated how actors within the wind power production experience the set of laws concerning net connection. Furthermore it sets out to describe the consequences of regulations. In an early stage of this project, it appeared that representatives of wind power companies felt that there was a lack of insight in net companies and the pricing of their services. Therefore, the focus of this study has been on the insight of the net companies. There is also a law in the electricity act that states that electricity producing units with an effect of less than 1500 kW is not obligated to pay tariffs. How actors in the wind power business experience this rule and the consequence of it is also examined in this study.
The method to implement this is to do qualitative interviews with stakeholders in the wind power industry in order to get their opinion on this matter. Theories of monopoly, principal-agent, and asymmetric information have been used to frame this problem.
Conclusions of the study are that wind power companies experience that they are "powerless" towards net companies and that they do not have as much insight in the net companies' pricing strategies as they desire. The consequence of this is a suspiciousness and anxiety that the pricing is not fair. The study also shows that a clearer set of laws concerning pricing of net connections and tariffs is requested. The study has also shown ideas and solutions for how the wind power companies can lower their degree of dependence and increase the insight in net connections and tariffs.